by Kōbō Abe
Well, the first one is a scene that follows the point when I hear the murmuring of your voice. Thrusting my foot into the door, which you have cautiously opened halfway, I push my way in and abruptly thrust my pistol in your face, which is blank with amazement as if you had swallowed a sudden gust of wind. I would like you to realize my perplexity. The act was simply too shameful. Indeed, I have often been irritated by your imperturbability, but even so it was unnecessary to act like some movie villain. If I were a seducer couldn’t I invent some pretext for approaching you, something more in keeping with a seducer? Since this was fancy, even a transparent lie would do … something like pretending to be an old classmate of your husband’s. Far from being a seducer, was I not an intimidator really? Furthermore, had there not been concealed in my mask from the beginning a scheme of revenge? There was at work here a justifiable feeling of vengeance, of defiance, of abhorrence for the worldly prejudice that deprived a man of citizenship along with his face. But with you … I don’t know … with you I think it doesn’t work that way, but I don’t know.… Then my reasoning powers were completely overwhelmed by the violent emotion that swept over me.
It was jealousy. Jealousy based on imagination was something I had experienced many times, but this was different. It was such a vivid physical feeling of excitement that I could not at once define it. No, it would be doubtless much more exact to call it a peristaltic movement. Waves of numbing pain, one after another, crept at regular intervals from my feet up to my head. You will get the exact picture if you imagine the movements of a centipede’s feet. Indeed, jealousy is an animal feeling, capable even of rising to murder. There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals. I opted for the latter.
But what in heaven’s name did I have to be so jealous of? Again, it was such a stupid reason that I hesitate to write about it. It was merely that the mask might lay hands on you and you might not resist and brush his hands firmly away … colors swirled around me. How funny it was. What you would do existed only in my imagination, and since these wild ideas were merely ones my mask had cooked up at its will—how shall I put it?—I had dreamt up a cause for my jealousy by myself and I was jealous because of myself.
If I was so aware of things, I could immediately put a halt to the imaginings or order the mask to make a fresh start, but … why did I not do so? Not only did I do nothing, but, as if I had a lingering attachment for this jealousy, I egged the mask on, even tempting it. No, it was not a lingering attachment; it may indeed have been revenge. Perhaps I had fallen into a vicious circle, pouring oil on the fire, as it were, using the agony of jealousy to spur the mask to acts of violence, and then, by these acts of violence, stirring my jealousy even more. If this were so, the motive could be my own desire, lying dormant within me. These seemed to be problems I had to face squarely and resolutely, without blaming only the mask. Yes, possibly … these were imaginings I was reluctant about, but—since before I lost my face, from the time when I had planned on leading an ordinary married life—was I not already secretly fostering the sprouts of jealousy against you? I was not unaware of this. What a pathetic discovery! Even though I do realize it now, it is already too late.…
It really was too late. The mask that was supposed to mediate between us was only a shameless rogue. Of course, supposing even for the moment that it was a gentle seducer, the situation would be the same. On the contrary, there was every possibility of being afflicted with a malignant jealousy that had no safety valve. And the result would surely be a scene of violence.
At length your fright changed to orgasmic spasms, which I myself had not anticipated … No, that’s enough … granting that I was acting in opposition to ordinary, every-day behavior, even so I had strayed too far from the proper course. If this deviation were a dream, I would take care to dress it in elegant metaphors, but it was merely realistic fantasy, altogether lacking in imagination. Enough of such hackneyed expressions.
I must not camouflage the last scene with such stereotypes. In fact, it was not only the stereotypes; the very ugliness was more than ordinarily suitable for an ending; at the same time it was a turning point that inspired my next actions. Pointing my gun at you, I began to bully you into a confession. Have you been masturbating during my absence, or what?… Don’t try to conceal anything, for I know what you’ve been doing, I persisted impatiently … And gradually I coiled around you. I would soon be at the end of my endurance. The time had come to put a stop to these filthy, wild fancies. How should I attempt to bring things into the open? Suddenly I was firmly convinced that the best way, the only way, would be to take off the mask and show you my face at the very instant you tried to answer me.
But for whom, in heaven’s name, should I bring things into the open? For me? For the mask? Or even for you? Perhaps I had not thought this point through. It was natural not to have thought about it. It was not these things I wanted to bring into the open, but the very concept of “face” that had driven me thus to the wall.
I had begun to feel an intolerable desolation at the great cleavage between the mask and myself. Perhaps I was already anticipating the catastrophe that was to come. The mask, as the name implied, would forever be my false face; and although my true nature could never be controlled by such a thing, once it had seen you it would fly off somewhere far beyond my control, and I could only watch it go in helpless, blank amazement. Thus, contrary to my purpose in making a mask, I had ended by recognizing the victory of the face. In order to consolidate myself into one personality, I must bring this masked play to an end by tearing off the mask.
But as I expected, the mask was not so stubborn. As soon as it perceived my determination, it retreated in haste, smiling bitterly, and I stopped my empty musings there. I inflicted no further chastisement on it. Since I was really not inclined to abandon my plans for tomorrow, however much I discouraged myself from the encounter in my fancies was I not as guilty as the mask—were we not both of the same ilk? No, of course, we were not equally guilty. There was no need to be so obsequious. At least in my plans for the next day, flashing the gun was not part of the program. The sexual element was there, to be sure, but such shamelessness was absolutely out of the question. While it might be possible with some unknown person with whom one might be riding in a streetcar, it was quite impossible to be aimlessly erotic about one’s wife.
Finally, when I passed in front of the house and peered through a crack in the fence at the living-room window, I saw several strings of bandages suspended like white kelp from the ceiling to dry. I suppose you had been washing the bandages I had been using in expectation of my return the day after tomorrow from my sham business trip. As soon as I saw this, I had the feeling that my heart, thrusting through my diaphragm, had sunk a foot or so. I was indeed in love with you. Though I was perhaps awkward about it, my love was constant. But the unhappy state of affairs was that I could affirm this love through awkwardness alone. I was like a child who cannot go on his school outing; at this point I could only be jealous of others.
EXCURSUS INSERTED ON A SEPARATE SHEET OF PAPER: This may be tedious, but I should like to attempt here once more a detailed investigation of the shameless fantasies of the mask. For I feel that concealed in the maneuvers surrounding these musings there was a significance beyond what I had perceived—to express it in detective-story terms—that the key to putting the finger on the guilty man, that is, the clue to the outcome of the whole affair, everything, was obvious.
Of course, I intend to write down the actual conclusion elsewhere. I dare say that within three days from the moment I am writing this, I shall have shown these notes to you; the three days are merely a rough estimate of the number probably necessary for getting the outcome into shape. But as it is my objective here merely to suggest the conclusion without going into details, it will be enough to include it in my final statement. I am determined that that is the best way for completing my notes. My goal,
properly speaking, is something quite different. I want at least to add a correction to the general idea of the erotic—or stress the difference between the mask and myself—which I intended as a justification, but which to the contrary resulted in my being plagued by shackles. Since I have already acknowledged my guilt, there should be some margin left for justifying myself, as long as I do not distort the truth.
One day I casually accompanied the mask out, as if allowing a good child out on its own. A bright, cheerful feeling spread over me, infecting me with the frolicsomeness of a dog that has just been let off his leash. However, thanks to the unexpected role my jealousy was to play, the mask and I were to fall into an extraordinary dilemma about you, which would plunge us into a desperate duel. At the same time, of course, this jealousy made me remember again the affection and love I had for you—owing to that, the plans, which I had suspended until the following day, inevitably became more and more pressing—and reluctantly I could do nothing but ask the mask for a temporary truce.
Of course, the constraint remained a deep-piercing thorn. The streetcar toward town was empty, and whatever seat I took, the window glass became a dark mirror, reflecting my mask: an unknown character, sporting a beard, attired in strangely affected clothes and, though it was evening, still wearing his sunglasses. I put an ultimatum to him: he would either have to observe the truce calmly for a while or I would rip the mask off. Moreover, the character was concealing a pistol. He was extremely vigilant. As the mask smiled its sarcastic smile at me, it seemed to say:
—Well. Don’t gripe so. I’m a necessary evil.…If you expect to get something from me, you’d better be prepared to take the good with the bad.
I tried opening the window a crack. The clear, damp evening air whistled in. It did not touch my feverish cheeks but stopped exactly in front of my necessary evil, cooling only the nape of my neck and my palms. The mask, whose difference from me was distressing psychologically, adhered too closely and was disagreeable physically. It was like some botched false tooth.
But—I too, not to be outdone, tried to justify myself—if I could put up with a few obstacles (the jealousy, for example), by hook or by crook the cease-fire agreement could be preserved, and some way or other I could achieve my immediate goal, which was restoring the roadway to you. It should be impossible for me to entertain such a shameless interest in you, my wife. And furthermore, I became amazingly gentle in my feelings toward you, in inverse proportion to my sentiments toward the mask.
But was that really true? You already know the result, though I do not repeat it here—the problem does not concern the results alone—so what grounds are there to treat myself as different?
Surely one may say that an aimless erotic act is a sexual tangent to the abstract human relationship. As long as the definition of “other people” is confined to abstract relationships, those people are merely something in abstract opposition, one against others, enemies; and their sexual opposition is, in short, the impersonal erotic act. For example, as long as the abstract idea of womanhood exists, free-floating masculine eroticism is an unavoidable necessity. Such eroticism indeed is not the enemy of women, as is usually thought; rather woman herself is the enemy of its impersonality. If that is true, an erotic existence is not deliberately distorted sex, but may be considered a typical form of sex as it exists today.
Anyway, today the line of demarcation between enemy and fellow man, which in other times was easily and clearly distinguishable, has become blurred. When you get on a streetcar, you have innumerable enemies around you rather than fellow men. Some enemies come into your house disguised as letters, and some, against which there is no defense, infiltrate into your very cells in the guise of radio waves. In such circumstances, enemy encirclement becomes custom to which we are already inured, and “fellow man” is as inconspicuous as a needle in a desert. We have coined concepts of succor, such as “All men are brothers,” but where is such a vast, imaginary repository of “brothers”? Wouldn’t it be more logical to reconcile oneself to the fact that others are enemies and abandon such highflown, misplaced hopes? Wouldn’t it be safer to hurry up and produce some antibody for loneliness?
And why shouldn’t we men, surfeited with loneliness, become involved in impersonal eroticism even with our wives, not to mention other women? My own case cannot be exceptional. If, as a function of the mask, I acknowledge a considerable abstracting of the human relationship—indeed, I am probably addicted to empty fancies precisely because of this abstracting—I, who am trying to find some solution, had best shelve my own problems and shut up. Yes, no matter how clever I am, the very subject of my plans is perhaps merely erotic fancy.
If that is so, the plans for the mask were not my own special desire alone, but merely the expression of a contemporary, detached man’s common craving. Even though it seemed at first blush that I had again lost to the mask, in reality I had not at all.
Just a minute! The plans for the mask were not the only thing. The fate of having lost my face and of being obliged to depend on a mask was in itself not exceptional, but was rather a destiny I shared with contemporary man, wasn’t it? A trivial discovery indeed. For my despair lay in my fate, rather than in the loss of my face; it lay in the fact that I did not have the slightest thing in common with other men. I envied even a cancer victim, because he shares something with other men. If this turned out to be untrue, the hole into which I had fallen was not an abandoned well provided with an emergency escape; it was a penitentiary cell, recognized by everyone but me. My uncertainty exerted a tremendous influence on my despair. Even you could probably understand what I wanted to say. Youths whose voices are beginning to change and girls who are beginning to menstruate know that the temptations of masturbation create a lonely despair, for they are convinced that this temptation is their unique sickness. Or their humiliating feeling of desperation at a first little theft (marbles or bits of erasers or pencil leads), which like measles every one of us has experienced once, seems a crime of which they and they alone should be ashamed. If such stupidity extends beyond a given period of time it ultimately produces toxic symptoms, and these people may become either actual sexual criminals or inveterate thieves. No matter how they may try to universalize their feeling of guilt to avoid this trap, it will probably be to no avail. Rather, escaping from loneliness by realizing that everyone is equally guilty is by far the most effective way of settling things.
Perhaps because of this realization, when I later went out to drink saké, to which I was unaccustomed, I had such a feeling of closeness to others that I wanted to embrace all the strangers I saw. (I will write about this episode immediately following this passage and have decided to avoid duplication here.) Was this not because I had dimly felt among them the intimacy of kindred souls who had also lost their faces? Of course, it was not that I felt close to fellow men, but that I recognized the very lonely, abstract relationship in which everyone is an enemy. I could hardly imagine an occasion where we would frolic around together like puppies on some vague electric blanket of good intentions, like the cast of characters in a novel.
But as for me, it was a big discovery just knowing that on the other side of these concrete walls, people with the same destiny as I were prisoners. When I strained my ears, a groaning from the next cell came palpably to me. As time passed, innumerable sighs, murmurings, and sobbing cries swirled up like cumulus clouds, filling the whole jail with the sound of cursing.
—I’m not the only one … I’m not the only one … I’m not the only one.…
Even in the daytime, if luck is with them, they are allotted time for exercise and bathing, and it may be that they will find the opportunity of secretly sharing their fate by looks, and gestures, and whisperings.
—I’m not the only one … I’m not the only one … I’m not the only one.…
When you take all these voices together, the dimensions of the jail are no trifling matter. But that is to be expected. The crimes with which they are charged—
the crime of having lost one’s face, the crime of shutting off the roadway to others, the crime of having lost understanding of others’ agonies and joys, the crime of having lost the fear and joy of discovering unknown things in others, the crime of having forgotten one’s duty to create for others, the crime of having lost a music heard together—these are crimes which express contemporary human relations, and thus the whole world assumes the form of a single penal colony. Even so, the anguish at my being a prisoner remains unchanged. Moreover, in contrast to their having lost only their spiritual face, I have undergone a physical loss, and so there is naturally a difference in the degree of our solitude. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling hope. It is not the same as being buried alive, and surely there is cause for hope. Isn’t it true that the liabilities of an incomplete person—not being able, without the mask, to sing, to exchange blows with an enemy, to be a lecher, to dream—have become a common subject between me and others, and I alone am not guilty? Perhaps so. Perhaps so indeed.
Now, I wonder what you think of these points. If there is nothing wrong with my reasoning, even you are no exception, and I presume you cannot but agree, but—of course, you must agree—if you do not, there is no reason for you to force me into a corner like some wounded monkey by brushing my hand off your skirt, nor to ignore the trap of the mask, nor to drive me into a state where I could not help but write these notes. The fact has been made clear that your face—the mobile, harmonious type—was a mask too. In short, we are two spots of the same ink. It was not solely my responsibility. Indeed, simply writing these notes has been fruitful. It was impossible to be left without any communication at all. You will surely agree with this point.